


Scale and Claw

by downjune



Series: Sharp tooth, Flat tooth [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Body Horror, M/M, Monsters, Rough Sex, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 10:27:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11438952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downjune/pseuds/downjune
Summary: Marc-Andre liked pain about as much as the next NHLer—which was to say, he liked it plenty.





	Scale and Claw

**Author's Note:**

> I've been figuring out how best to process my Marc-Andre Fleury feelings, so this is another stab. It's very stabby. I was SO THRILLED for MAF the first half of the playoffs, I wanted to write all the triumphant fic, and then... that urge was quickly squashed when, well, you know. There are echoes of the last Flower/Tanger fic I wrote in this, but no one would ever accuse me of not returning to common themes in my writing.
> 
> Takes place at the same time as Sharp-Tooth, Flat-Tooth, but stands alone. And hopefully answers some of your questions from your comments!

Scale and Claw

Marc-Andre liked pain about as much as the next NHLer—which was to say, he liked it plenty. Nobody made it to the Stanley Cup finals without some preferences twisting around and distorting. Bruises and scrapes became the only tenderness any of them could stomach. Fangs, claws, and armor left bruises and scrapes like kisses. The scales across his cheeks to protect from high sticks sliced like razors.

But Marc-Andre didn’t make it to the Stanley Cup finals. Just over halfway through he got yanked, and he never got back in. He’d played his last game in a Pens uniform, and his last period had been a fucking disaster. No second chance, no next-game. He was finished. Forever. 

He was _furious_.

Matty took his place and did what he did best—stopped enough pucks and looked unflappable at it. Marc-Andre watched from the bench with last year’s playoffs heavy in his mind. This year was better, but his last seasons in Pittsburgh would haunt him for a long time.

Matt's monster came on quick once he was in-net, his knees and knuckles shining with scales, his pupils turned to slits. 

During the Washington series, Marc-Andre had taken him wherever there was even the illusion of quiet and privacy and done what he couldn’t the year before. He'd grabbed too hard, pushed too hard, and bit too hard, and Matty had wanted all of it. Looked up from flat on his back or over his shoulder like he couldn’t stand to miss a second. He touched the scrapes along the grooves of his ribs and the bite marks across his hips with something like love. Eager to please and careless with his thin human skin. 

Marc-Andre had been so proud—of himself and of Matty for being so strong. So good. Nothing could stop them.

When Marc-Andre lost his net in Ottawa, Matt came to him just once after Game 5, flush with his shutout. Marc-Andre had bared his teeth in the opposite of an invitation, and he hadn’t tried again. And maybe the hurt—that reverse of what Marc-Andre had allowed the year before when he’d given Matty every inch of his fragile skin—was what brought the change on so quickly.

Goalies didn’t get beat up in playoffs the way skaters did. Matt and Marc-Andre clawed the shit out of each other without touching, and got the same result. 

*

Before Game 6 of the Final, Marc-Andre soaked in his Nashville hotel bathtub. His scales were flaking off, his thick leathery skin melting into human flesh. His nails were softening. He was turning back, when the rest of the guys were barely clinging to the memory of who they were in the regular season. Who they would try to reclaim in the short offseason. 

Knowing he wouldn’t play in what could be the last game of the year, Marc-Andre didn’t try to preserve any of it. At least this way he could look good walking across that stage in Vegas. Look like himself instead of an animal. Fresh and ready to start over in the desert.

The knock at his door startled him, and he sat up straighter in the tub. “What the fuck?” he called through the open bathroom door. The guys had been good about giving him space.

“It’s me,” came his answer. _Me_ being Sid. 

“All right, hold on.” Standing up, more scales sloughed from his shins and forearms, floating in the bathwater like a dull second skin. He opened the drain and promised to leave a massive tip for housekeeping. 

Hiding his transformation in a fluffy hotel robe, Marc-Andre answered the door to find Sid in sweats, looking at him with his two giant lower canines poking out over his top lip. With his bow-legs, shovel-jaw, and barrel of a torso, he looked like a bulldog standing upright. A sad bulldog. It was never not going to be funny, and Marc-Andre felt a laugh pushing at his chest from inside his ribs.

He stepped back and let Sid through, but his stomach sank when Sid said nothing and crossed the room to his bed. Marc-Andre’s sweats lay in a pile where he’d left them for after his bath, and Sid picked them up. 

Marc-Andre’s dogs liked to sit in his clothes when he was in the shower, too. Maybe they figured he couldn’t go anywhere without his clothes, so he wouldn’t leave. Sid was giving him that same stubborn, melancholy look. Except Sid had words, where his dogs did not.

“I can’t let you go,” he said. “I can’t.”

 _Fuck_. So, this was happening now.

“I’m not going anywhere.” _Tonight_.

“Good. You’re staying.” His words came out strange with all those teeth in the way, but it wasn’t as funny anymore. 

Thought processes simplified drastically here at the bitter end of the season. Keep the puck out of your own net; put it in theirs. Keep hold of it until then. Knock down everyone in the way. Keep hold of what’s yours. Keep hold, keep hold.

Marc-Andre took a deep breath and crossed the room to stand in front of Sid. He tugged on the tie of his robe until the knot slipped free and it hung open. Sid stared at him, first his waist at eye level—his soft dick and his rangy thighs—then up to his face. 

“You’ll stay,” he said like a question.

“I’ll stay.” _Tonight_. 

Sid shook his head. He lifted Marc-Andre’s sweats to his face and breathed in deeply, then carefully set them aside. He looked up again, betrayal in every line of his face. “Liar.”

He grabbed the flaps of Marc-Andre’s robe and tugged, pulling him sharply forward. Scrambling, Marc-Andre knelt up on the bed, straddling Sid’s thighs so he didn’t fall onto him. With a great huff, Sid grabbed him by the waist and bit the meat of his shoulder. His teeth weren’t that sharp, but blunt bites hurt worse anyway.

Marc-Andre hissed in a breath that was shoved right back out of him when Sid lifted him, turned, and slammed him down onto the mattress. He knelt over Marc-Andre and growled, a hurt-animal sound. 

All of this was going to hurt. 

*

Maybe pit bull was the better comparison. Bulldogs were silly animals, fragile from human engineering. Pit bulls were quick as hell, _strong_ , and they did not let go once they had hold. 

Marc-Andre spread his knees wider and got himself lower toward the mattress so Sid could curl further over his back. His shoulders covered in bites, his ribs and chest gouged with scratches, Marc-Andre breathed noisily against the sheet and loved every second of it. 

They were all rigorously screened before the start of the playoffs ahead of what inevitably happened, so Marc-Andre didn’t spare a thought to the risk of having Sid fuck him bare. Sid had been inside more than half the team by this point, but he was here, at the end, in Marc-Andre, his clawed hands hooked across Marc-Andre’s chest to his shoulders, pulling him back into every thrust. 

Marc-Andre’s skin bruised and tore too easily, and after this, he’d get an earful from Tanger, who’d grown his beard in solidarity but kept his humanity from his vantage point in the press box. Marc-Andre was at least part-monster still, even if his scaly armor had gone. Sid would fuck him up, and Tanger would patch him up, and Marc-Andre would carry this with him across the country. 

Sid bit down by Marc-Andre’s armpit, the skin elastic and sensitive there, and he cried out before he could swallow the sound. Sid licked over the spot in apology and didn’t let up. “Be loud,” he said into Marc-Andre’s ear. 

“Go harder,” Marc-Andre bit back.

Sid groaned and pressed his forehead between Marc-Andre’s shoulder blades. “I won’t let you leave,” he said, breath hot and damp on his skin. “They can’t have you. I’ll kill them first.”

Marc-Andre flushed hot, his heart ready to burst, and almost reluctantly, he reached down to grip his cock. He wanted to draw this out forever. Live in the narrow vision of that future Sid offered—tangled on a bed, sweating and fucked raw so that no one else would have him. But he could feel his limits rapidly approaching in the ache of his hips and the burn of his skin. 

He jerked off in time with Sid’s thrusts and shuddered over the edge when Sid yanked him back by his hair and claimed his throat in one last bite. Sid’s voice was smothered against his skin, but Marc-Andre could feel the tremors that shook him. And the wetness on his furred cheeks when he rubbed his face against Marc-Andre’s neck. The orgasm was secondary. It signaled the end.

*

Sid dropped off to sleep as soon as he’d settled them on their sides, still tucked tight inside Marc-Andre and snuggled against his back. Pain fired in waves across Marc-Andre’s shoulders and down his front, radiating from his ass up his spine. He soaked it up like any other good workout before the shakes set in and he needed to eat. 

Sid would be gone by then. They were practicing at not saying goodbye. 

*

It sucked that he had to get up to let Tanger in, but that was how locked doors worked, unfortunately, so he hobbled over on unsteady legs and didn’t bother covering himself once he’d looked out to see that Kris had come alone. 

“Jesus shit,” Tanger hissed at the sight of him. 

The adrenalin and the afterglow had worn off, and now Marc-Andre just felt fucked. In every facet of his life.

“You need a shower, homme,” Kris said, wrinkling his nose. 

Marc-Andre shook his head. “The tub’s a wreck. I’m—” He gestured down at himself. “—just this again.”

“Like ‘this’ is so bad?” Kris grumbled, offended for them both.

“Like you didn’t almost rip my throat out this time last year,” Marc-Andre answered. “And like it.”

Kris snorted and carefully pushed him backward into the bathroom, dropping him off at the closed toilet lid. He didn’t deny it. Kris was a terror during playoffs when he could play.

“Blech,” he said at the tub, but he was already reaching for a spare towel. He wiped Marc-Andre’s dead scales out of the tub, balled up the towel, and left it in the corner. “I can’t believe you were going to leave that for housekeeping.” It was an obvious impression of Sid from before his teeth and claws crowded out higher brain function, and Marc-Andre managed a smile. 

“Bath or shower?” Kris asked, reaching for the faucet. 

“Shower.” He’d already spent enough time moping in this bathroom. Standing when Tanger had turned on the water and pulled the curtain shut, Marc-Andre was startled to see him shucking out of his clothes. “What?” he asked thickly.

Kris snorted. “You’ll fall down and concuss yourself.”

But when they were both under the spray, and Kris was washing out Sid’s bites and scratches with gentle, soapy fingers, Marc-Andre leaned against the wall and graciously did not suggest that anything else might be going on. 

The heat and noise of the water made his knees soft, and he almost missed Tanger’s quiet, “I fucking hate that you’re leaving.”

Anger surged in him, a last gasp of what had toughened his skin and covered it in shiny armor. He turned and shoved Tanger back against the wall. Tanger’s feet slipped and his eyes widened. Marc-Andre pinned him there like he’d pinned Matty before he lost his net. Like he’d pinned Rusty after they’d passed the battling helmet back and forth a few times and Marc-Andre thought he’d lead his team the whole way to the Cup. His team knew he could be this, too—proud and monstrous. Tanger knew.

“Don’t say that to me.”

Tanger’s eyes were wide and dark, and with all that hair on his face, he looked like a shaggy, wet dog bracing for a kick. “You can’t ask me not to—”

“Don’t say it.” Marc-Andre looked down, strength and anger leaving him. “I can’t fucking stand it if you say it.”

Kris nodded, and Marc-Andre let him go. He reached back and turned off the shower.

They climbed into bed without drying off very carefully, and Marc-Andre trailed his fingers along the raised marks on his ribs, feeling the paths of Sid’s nails in the dark beneath the sheet. Kris lay close enough that their shoulders just brushed, and when he turned his head, his breath huffed against Marc-Andre’s ear.

They didn’t say anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr!](http://itstartledme.tumblr.com/)


End file.
